Monday, October 3, 2011

Goals, Schmoals... aka the first Blog Cruise this year

Oh, my. It is that time already. Time for the Blog Cruise to set off again. This year, it will be a little different, as we will only be cruising every other week. I will try to participate on most of the voyages.

But I've been seriously procrastinating on this one.

What are your homeschool related goals for the year?

Okay, so I know I need to have homeschool related goals. I do. Everyone knows this stuff, right? That is why there are so stinking many pithy little sayings telling me that. Such as:

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. --Lewis Carroll

If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. --Zig Ziglar

The future you see is the future you get. --Robert Allen

Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them. --Stephen Covey

When you set goals, something inside of you starts saying, "Let's go,
let's go," and ceilings start to move up. --Zig Ziglar

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. --Brian Tracy

Unless you have a definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not
going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you. --Zig
Ziglar

What matters is where you want to go. Focus in the right direction! --Donald Trump

You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal. --Zig Ziglar

Okay, so not all of them were pithy little sayings... but the point is, "everybody" knows goals are important. But George Lucas sums up where I am: "Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals,
but that's one of the hardest things to do because you don't always know
exactly where you're going, and you shouldn't."

I don't know where I'm going.

So... I've been avoiding writing this post. I'm so caught up in the everday that I don't make the time to figure out anything remotely big and grand like our goals.

In a nutshell, then, MY goals for our homeschool year:

To get my teens working far more independently. The current teen is being given his assignments for the week -- assignments he helps figure out in the first place. And he has the responsibility of figuring out just what he will do from day to day. My 'will be a teen next month' one is getting a lot more guidance from me, but he is at least responsible for when he does what during the day.

Back to the basics. I need to have a serious focus on reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic going on here. And our schedules need to reflect that. That also requires some decision-making on my part, particularly in math.

Read-alouds. Once upon a time, I had a goal of at least two hours a day of read-aloud time. And that was time that *everyone* was listening. I'm probably back to something around two hours a day, but that is split into groups. I really think read-alouds are important, and I need to at least have the non-high schoolers back up to two hours a day each. And I'll be striving for at least a half-hour for Connor. And yes, some of that will be audiobooks.

That's it. I mean, yeah, I have other goals for them too. Character related, Scout related, chore-related. But this post, for me, is about the academic side of things.

How about you? What goals do you have? Do you find goal setting easier than I do?

And if you go click on the above button (or here... which will be clickable after the Cruise post goes live) you can see what others are striving for.

6 comments:

I'm with you. I had a very difficult time with this topic. I think it's because I don't care if we get to page such and such at the end of the year. In the words of that famous philosopher Captain Jack Sparrow, "It's not the destination, so much as the journey.”

Yup, I have a hard time with the goal-setting, too. I did finally write up a last-minute post on this this week. But I'm not sure that I can say I wanted to. And your first goal was pretty much identical to my first goal. I probably should have added math into my goals, too, but reading factored big in my goals as well.